Basketmouth Horoscopes Album Download
Selene Bulger
What are your favourite features on Basketmouth's Horoscopes album? Did they make this list or is your list different from ours? Share with us in the comments section below and give it a listen if you haven't right here.
Wande Coal, 2Baba, M.I Abaga, Simi, Reekado Banks, Buju, Falz, Oxlade Efya, Magnito, IllBliss, Dremo, Blaqbonez, Peruzzi, Flavour, The Cavemen, and Johnny Drille all appear on the album.
Basketmouth\u2019s Yabasi album marked one of the silver linings of a tough pandemic year. 2020\u2019s early apprehension about a strange illness decimating the world gave way to lonesome lockdowns and drastic changes across the world we live in. The new normal, the mandates, and reduced freedoms and human interactions did hurt. But it also clicked the refresh button on Nigerian music. As things slowed down and the world yearned for peace, a new demand emerged for a different type of sound, ushering in a flood of melody and introspective songwriting. Basketmouth\u2019s music walked through that gate. He\u2019s reinventing himself again, calling to Nigeria for an extension of our social contract and pushing music as his latest product.
Yabasi, 2020\u2019s best-album forerunner, was Basketmouth\u2019s homecoming. He\u2019s gone around the world, met a lot of people and done a lot of things. But music never truly leaves your soul. Returning as an A&R was perfect timing. In the past five years we have witnessed the expansion and redefinition of what it means to be a Nigerian musician. Singing a song and owning it used to be a constant bundle. These days, it\u2019s all up in the air. You can sing a song and not take it home. Ownership is mostly defined by whose name appears on the final files uploaded to the DSPs and a rather spleet sheet. And what affords you the privilege doesn\u2019t have to be your talent in vocalizing. You can be the choirmaster. Create a theme, work your butt off to assemble your cast of artists and producers. Pay for everything. Split royalty points around the room and own the final product.
Horoscopes, the product of that deal, comes loaded with extra marketing support. Although he scarcely makes the connection in official communications, the album also serves as a soundtrack for a feature length film (Scorpio), planned for release in 2022. Horoscopes takes a portion of the movie, blows up all the emotions within it, and examines them via music. Much like its predecessor, the supporting cast of collaborators on Horoscopes is intergenerational. Basketmouth spreads his wings far, uniting extreme clusters of artists for effect. Check out the posse cut \u201CAssembly of Gods.\u201D It\u2019s a long, winding, breezy outburst of reflection and braggadocio by the Cavemen, Falz, Dremo, Illbliss, Flavour. Where did we get this community creativity on a mainstream-facing record?
Horoscopes isn\u2019t put together like a soulless radio playlist; neither does it present as a desperate data dump of records. While Highlife stood as the underlying sound culture in Yabasi, this new album is an enjoyable punctuation of styles and sounds. To provide listeners with a consistent cadence, Basketmouth says he craves a relative sameness of sound in his projects. But his actions show different, with every record existing in adjacent genres and fusions. \u201CI was trying to create a sound that is different from the last one, but still obeys the theme,\u201D Basketmouth told a crowd at his cozy album-listening party in early February. The songs are new. But beyond the excellence of the music, what binds them are the story lines. Everyone Basketmouth talked to, he gave them a guiding story and set them out to pasture. Sometimes these stories are peculiar. Simi, M.I Abaga and Johnny Drille were told to imagine a soundtrack for a married guy whose wife still harbors feelings for her incarcerated ex. Peruzzi was approached in Warri during a gig and offered a happy scene from Scorpio. His response, \u201CCelowi,\u201D a Latino-influenced call for dancing, uplifts the entire affair. Efya and Oxlade cry about the hustle, and Kwabena Kwabena leaves his village in search of better living conditions.
You could argue that Basketmouth is not solely an A&R (his rap vocals close the album), but a hybrid performer embodying the duties of a savvy music exec. It\u2019s unprecedented for Nigerian music, and for him. The entire industry is up in the air, as Afrobeats broadens and dials up the push for global dominance. The energy in Lagos says you can be anything, do anything, and land on your feet in music. Basketmouth\u2019s ambitions might appear new to us, but there\u2019s a feeling that the immediate future will have more personalities try their hands at interpreting music.